


and into sleep

by seryphsystem (Slie)



Category: Subarashiki Kono Sekai | The World Ends With You
Genre: Gen, Joshua Is Also Terrible, Queerplatonic Relationships, Reaper Humor Is Terrible, at least the character death is just already canon, there's a lot of necrophilia jokes for two people who are explicitly not dating, this was going to be cute and silly headcanons but then it took a SWAN DIVE INTO HELL
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-10 21:58:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12921066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slie/pseuds/seryphsystem
Summary: The Game works on prices and equivalence- life for death, a fee for the chance to live.What price did Joshua pay to become Composer?





	and into sleep

Neku’s first clue is the music.

Not Music, not this time, but _music_. He can hear it all the way from Dead God’s Pad, bits of notes and words that are coming in through his ears for once, not his head.

 _Shibuya has some bad habits,_ Joshua told him once, wicked and sly like it was some private joke between the two- three?- of them and no one else. But he can take “bad habits” and shove that up his ass, as far as Neku’s concerned, because having your thoughts derailed by music Just For Him at top volume in the middle of exams is so much more trouble than Neku has ever agreed to deal with.

-Come to think of it, he never really agreed to any of this. Thanks, Josh. Thanks a lot.

Anyway, this time there’s music.

It’s not loud enough for him to get a good feel for it, just a hint of sound, but he kicks off his shoes at the door and follows it anyway. The glass floor should be cold against his feet but it really only manages lukewarm, even when it turns to not-quite-smooth stone and concrete in the halls sealed off from even the highest-ranked of keypins. He doesn’t need a key; he’s Neku.

Neku’s second clue is the location.

It’s not like nobody ever comes back here. Neku does, definitely, and he’s pretty sure he’s caught Kariya out once or twice. There’s a studio that probably belonged to Shades, which is creepy as hell and Neku’s not ever going to go in there, and a suspiciously well-stocked kitchen with a freaking _poison cabinet._ There’s the occasional tag by Mr. H too, but they’re so old Neku thinks he’s justified in assuming the barista never visits to touch them up.

The oldest tag is outside Joshua’s room.

It’s the furthest back of all the rooms in this corridor, as far as Neku knows. There’s always the chance that there’s more hidden behind a particularly inconspicuous imprint, but- well, it’s _Joshua’s room._ So that’s a little unlikely. And the tag on the wall is old, like really old, because the style is almost completely different from the Udagawa mural and there’s a scarily formal edge to it that reminds Neku an awful lot of calligraphy and ink and brushes rather than spray paint. He can’t even sense anything from it, it’s just paint.

Neku’s third clue is, well… Joshua.

He doesn’t have a better description than that, because he’s too busy blanking out from the sight of his sometimes-partner sprawled out on his huge fancy bed like something out of a porn magazine, wearing not much more than an oversized shirt. But Josh is very precisely in the RG, which is bizarre. And he’s quiet, which is worse.

Joshua is never quiet, even when his mouth is shut. He hums with some kind of sound just from existing. And he hates limiting himself to the RG frequencies, complains and whines for hours and hours whenever he thinks he has to. Even when they hang out he keeps moving in and out of the UG whenever he thinks he can get away with it, bystanders be damned.

Neku thinks he’s justified in being just a little freaked out.

“Josh, what the _hell?_ ”

Maybe more than just a little.

But finally, sound! Movement! Some kind of hint that Josh isn’t a corpse! At least not physically, because Neku is _really not into necrophilia, thanks_ and that’s a really disturbing thought and Joshua is such a bad influence. And he’s just gonna cut off that train of thought right there before it gets any worse.

Joshua rolls his head towards him, and his eyes are huge and black. Not badly-edited-TV-show black, because that would be even more terrifying than usual, but his usual bullshit purple irises are pretty much gone and there’s barely a needle’s width of lilac around his pupils to give away the guy’s actual eye color. His eyelids barely flicker when Neku settles down next to him, easing his way onto the absolutely ridiculously plush and soft blankets, and the usual smirk Joshua graces him with is about seven degrees softer than it was this morning.

Or yesterday morning, because it’s three AM.

Neku’s fourth clue is the time.

“What the hell?” he says again, because that is definitely worth asking. “Are you _high?_ ”

The smirk slides into an actual grin at that, all thin and lazy and full of teeth and holy shit, that look is absolutely terrifying. If Neku’s life was a manga that’d be worthy of a full-page spread. (His life had better not be a manga, no matter what Joshua says about alternate worlds, because that would be way too weird for even him. And more than a little voyeuristic, and Neku _hates_ PDA.)

When it doesn’t look like the jackass is going to actually answer him, Neku huffs and elbows his way under the blankets. It’s been a long day, dammit, and he spent most of it wrestling with clients who would Really Rather Not pay him for his work. ‘Anyone can do it,’ his pale freckled ass. Neku’s good at what he does and he’s damn well going to be paid for it.

When he makes the mistake of actually touching Joshua’s skin, they both flinch. Neku definitely does not squeak and jump back, because he’s not that easily scared, but having a universe suddenly open up in your head with no warning is- it’s-

A giggle this time, and there’s a bare arm reaching over to pull him over and it’s not just touch but a tidal wave, a glorious overwhelming cacophony of sound, and Neku is falling over and Shibuya is everywhere and he’s falling, falling in.

 

* * *

 

Neku’s phone is a lying liar who lies, because there’s no way it’s any earlier than three in the afternoon. He glares down at the phone tucked into the crook of his bare arm, too heavy from sleep to hold it properly.

 _6:57 AM_ blinks with obnoxious cheerfulness back up at him. He lets his head fall back onto the cushions in disgust, and hears a giggle.

On second thought, maybe the obnoxiousness comes from the delighted Composer next to him. Sans clothing, makeup, or common sense.

Neku swears. Loudly, extensively, with great emotion and creativity. By the end of his tirade Josh is sitting up next to him and applauding.

“I didn’t realize that was anatomically possible,” is his appreciative response. Neku facepalms. Hard.

“ _Please_ tell me we didn’t have sex,” he says. His voice is a little muffled between the covers and his hand, but Josh has magical musical powers from hell and can just suck it.

...Hopefully not literally.

“We didn’t have sex,” Joshua repeats dutifully, and giggles when Neku turns his maximum-power Death Glare™ on him. “Don’t worry, dear. There was no funny business. Your virgin honor is safely intact. Your innocence is unspoiled-”

“Please shut up.”

“Your purity is unsullied, Neku de-”

And then his voice is blissfully cut off as Neku does his absolute best to _smother him with a pillow._

After a minute Josh lifts the pillow up to grin at him, bright and effortless, and he’s totally cheating with Composer-y powers because Neku’s been pressing down with all his might and Joshua has freaking sticks for arms.

“I think you’re supposed to have a safeword before doing that,” he says.

“I don’t need a safeword, I just need to _kill you dead._ ”

“Kinky. I didn’t know you were a necrophiliac, dear.”

Neku growls and opts for strangling instead, since clearly the pillow is biased and useless and Joshua is cheating, only then Joshua reaches out with a neat mental _twist_ and he’s on the other side of the bed before Neku can shake the imprint off.

“You should have killed me when you actually could, Neku,” and why does he even put up with this asshole. Obviously eating bullets did something to Neku’s head.

He tries to think that as loud as possible at the jerk, but of course he just gets giggles. Ugh.

Thankfully after a minute Joshua goes to get himself some clothing. It’s too early in the morning to be thinking about his naked butt.

“Don’t worry,” Shibuya’s most annoying voice floats back from Josh’s ridiculous walk-in closet, “You’re a hundred years too young to be my type.”

Neku is just. Not going there. Nope. And if his partner could cut it out with the mind reading, that’d be great.

He comes back with an armful of Dragon Couture, of course, because being a death god apparently means you’re rich as hell, and dumps it on Neku’s head.

“Get changed, dear. I can smell the paint fumes from the other side of the room.”

That’s bullshit, because the stuff Neku uses doesn’t even leave fumes. He takes a discreet sniff anyway.

And that face is definitely Joshua laughing at him.

“I’m surprised you don’t smell like- what were you even smoking? Weed?” Time for a change of topic. Sometimes the only way to win is through a tactical retreat.

A slow blink. “I don’t think drugs actually work on me, you know.”

“There go all my plans of poisoning your ramen.” Oh, point to Neku, he actually looks offended for half a second before laughing.

“I think Chef Doi might have something to say about that.”

...Urk. That’s a terrifying mental image. The guy keeps his chef's knives pretty close at hand, and there’s that one time he went after a thief that- wait a sec.

“Dammit, Josh, stop imprinting!”

“❤,” he says, and that’s just bullshit and the worst use of imprinting since the invention of curry ramen. Neku throws a dirty shirt at him and he goes down laughing like a particularly glowy hyena in pristine Pegaso sweatpants.

There’s a Gatito shirt in the stack and Neku grabs it, nice, he hasn’t had the chance to buy that design off Mr. H yet. He stopped feeling bad about stealing Joshua’s fancy stuff about the same time the guy gave him a gun and said to shoot him, anyway. He figures it counts as life insurance or hazard pay or something like that.

(And it really is a pain in the ass getting payment for his art. The starving artist stereotype exists for a very annoying reason, and that reason is because it actually freaking happens.)

By the time Neku’s wrestled himself into some form of decency, Josh has already swanned out of the room in a flutter of fancy pants and swishy robes. It’s a really obvious message of _this conversation is over._

Too bad for Joshua. Neku’s stubborn, he’s tired, and he wants answers.

 

* * *

 

Joshua’s skin is corpse-white under the kitchen lights, and he looks tired. There’s just a little bit of extra slowness as he gets his tea, a moment resting his head against the fridge, a subtle lean of his hips against the counter where he’d otherwise stand on his own.

“You don’t _look_ like someone who slept all night,” Neku says.

There’s a telling pause, and then his partner very pointedly hands him a coffee mug that says I’LL SLEEP WHEN I’M DEAD. There’s no coffee in it, because Joshua is a petty bastard, but Neku takes it as a win. There’s an ominously angelic cast to his face, though, so it’s time to run interference before whatever he’s scheming about comes back to bite Neku in the ass.

“Tell me now if it’s a new pin or something,” he says. “So I know which one to avoid.”

Joshua pouts a little.

“It wasn’t that bad.”

Neku gives that precisely the response it deserves, which is none, and busies himself with making coffee. The coffeemaker here is a state-of-the-art, shiny stainless steel marvel of technology that would make any engineer weep with envy. That is to say, it’s almost uselessly impossible to operate.

Mr. H, he of the hipster cafe and old-school coffee, hates it with the apparent righteous passion of a thousand flaming Angels. (For all Neku knows, maybe it _is_ the righteous passion of a thousand flaming Angels. He’s not about to ask how that creepy hivemind-thing works when he’s not even supposed to know it exists in the first place.)

Josh hops up on the counter to watch him figure it out, mug tucked neatly between his piano-fingered hands. He’s damn near translucent and still limited to the RG and maybe that’s why Neku doesn’t yell at him for being a creepy dick, because it’s starting to get worrying how drained and hollowed-out the Composer is.

Maybe some of that gets across, or he’s doing his mind-reading thing again, but Joshua dims a bit.

“I was simply taking some time to myself, dear.”

“That was _not_ you masturbating,” Neku says without thinking, then turns bright red as Joshua chokes on his tea and starts laughing.

The floor does not obligingly swallow him up, so Neku settles for second best and lets his head make an acquaintance with the blissfully solid countertop.

He manages to lift one hand to point at Josh, not bothering to look at the snickering death god.

“Don’t you dare even start.”

“Such fascination with my sex life, Neku-”

“ _Don’t even._ ”

“I’m sure I can find you a necrophiliacs-anonymous group to-”

“Don’t you _dare._ ”

He’s grinning despite himself, and Joshua is reduced to a pile of giggles two feet away, tea mug and fuzzy slippers and all. Every time they start to calm down they’ll look up and make eye contact or Josh will say “necrophiliacs-” and Neku has to say “don’t you dare” or Joshua will have that _look_ and it’ll set them both off giggling again.

It’s not a bad way to spend a morning.

 

* * *

 

The problem isn’t that Joshua hates sharing about himself; it’s that he’s _so bad at it._ Maybe he’s like the Western faeries Neku read about in class, who never answer direct questions and circle around everything they say instead of stating anything outright.

But this is the same guy who led Neku around Shibuya giving lectures on every historical point, with the same sweet excitement as Shiki in a fabric shop. He’s the guy who sneaks extra mission objectives onto the weekly lists so that the smaller shops and businesses and artists in Shibuya’s nooks and crannies can stay afloat. Neku’s felt his delight when they broke higher tiers of fusion attacks, pure and proud and unabashed joy not to be alone, so bright and dizzying as to be incomprehensible in hindsight. He’s put up with the complaining and grouching at embarrassing missions or subpar food, and the teasing when something goes wrong or Neku gets used as a dress-up doll for the fifteenth day in a row.

Neku likes to think he knows Joshua fairly well, is what he’s getting at here.

So when he gets a text inviting him to the latest hot indie concert the night after whatever-that-was, he pretty much expects it to be related.

 _When?_ he texts back, and there’s a knock at the door, because Josh is an asshole and nowhere near as funny as he thinks he is. He’s wearing long sleeves, which is not just bizarre but an incredibly bad idea in the heat and the chaos of this kind of performance, and once they get to the venue he very deliberately lets go of Neku’s hand.

“Do try not to make skin contact, Neku,” and then he’s gone into the crowd and Neku’s cussing him out as he struggles to catch up.

The Music hits him like a bullet to the face when he gets in there, harsh and piercing. The actual music isn’t half bad, there’s some pretty serious talent, but the Music-

Well.

Shibuya’s obviously having fun. He can feel her bleeding over into the RG, see it in little flashes as he goes.

It’s in the way the band members grin at each other and play with just a little more flair, more improvisation. This is their best night yet, the kind that they’ll look back on later and go _hey, that was the most amazing performance we’ve ever had._ It’ll be what keeps them together in the hard times when they can’t quite pull their songs together or get the bookings they need or keep a hold of their fans.

There’s one of Shiki and Eri’s co-designers near the edge of the crowd, taking a bare moment to leave herself a note on her phone before she’s swept back up in the chaos. With Eri’s ideas and Shiki’s skills, it’ll be enough to get them some serious attention in the next few weeks, the Prince himself paying for a chance to wear their designs.

One of Neku’s classmates is tossing around his massive camera, bright-eyed and unafraid to climb to weird places to get the shots he needs. It’ll get him a reputation in Shibuya as _the_ photographer, the one you want at your concerts because he manages to get you in frame with just the right focus, at just the right moment. And more than a little because he could have a side job as a freaking gymnast.

Neku can’t normally see any of this. It’s bizarre, like having his Player Pin on him all over again, and that’s familiar enough that he doesn’t panic and just… breathes. In, out, move.

It takes him a minute to find Joshua. Normally he stands out like a beacon to Neku’s senses, all not-quite-right and their partner bond makes it easy enough to pick him out of a crowd. But in here his unveiled power only adds to everything, covers the whole place like the Musical equivalent of a shot of H’s best espresso.

Even with the sigils at the door Josh is half-out of the RG, people just barely skating around him with no idea why. When Neku forces his way to the center of the crowd (because of course) and grabs one clothed arm, all he merits is a bare glance from terrifyingly unfocused black eyes.

Yeah, no, he’s getting his partner out of there until the jerk sits down and _fucking_ _explains things_.  

Or not, because that’s apparently the cue for Joshua to glow and phase through his hand in a twist that doesn’t look like he’s even paying attention.

Well, fine, if he wants it that way.

Neku grabs his face so he _turns-_

-and the world comes apart.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t come back down til the concert’s nearly over.

“I really, really, hate you.”

Sweat-soaked and boneless by his side, Joshua barely manages a chuckle.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t like it.”

Neku’s really tempted to say exactly that. He’s disgusting and dirty with sweat and he has Joshua pressing close against him which really doesn’t help, and he’s that particular kind of tired that loops right around into being wide awake.

But, well.

He can’t say that, because he’s pretty sure that was the psychic equivalent of a contact high and to be completely honest it felt pretty damn good.

Joshua laughs at him, a little stronger this time, and Neku huffs.

“Shut up.”

“I did warn you.”

“No, you said not to touch you,” Neku says, maneuvering them both out the door. They look like a pair of drunks, probably. It’s hard to care. He doesn’t know if they’re in the RG or not, and it’s hard to care about that either.

“That does count as a warning, Neku dear.”

“I can always drop you.”

“Oh my, resorting to threats now? What _has_ that college been teaching you?”

“How to babysit dickass Composers, apparently.”

He can think a bit more clearly away from crowds, so Neku starts steering them towards the Shibuya River. His apartment is not Reaper-proof and he _really_ doesn’t have the income to repair anything that breaks.

Joshua snickers at that thought, breaking the silence. Neku scowls and elbows him.

“Hush, you.”

It takes all of Neku’s not inconsiderable skill and experience to sneak past the Reapers on duty and get them to the Dead Gods Pad undisturbed. Joshua doesn’t help, a giggling dead weight on his shoulder who probably thinks being seen by Reapers is the peak of humor.

...Dead weight. Ugh. Neku’s been hanging out with him too much, he’s starting to pick up the terrible jokes.

Thankfully they’re clear once they get into the River itself, footsteps echoing on concrete with practiced ominousness that does absolutely nothing to freak him out. Joshua probably did something to the acoustics for that, because the first few times Neku was here it was incredibly fucking creepy.

Or maybe that was the whole “dead kids fighting against backstabbing Reapers to murder a minor deity” thing. Hard to tell.

Josh does some kind of cheating thing that gets the door to the Pad to open for them, which is good but also deprives Neku of the chance to dump his fancy ass on the ground while he opens the door himself. He waits til they get to Joshua’s room to dump him on the bed instead, very casually and definitely not on purpose making sure he goes face first into a pillow. Karma is beautiful and awesome.

Job well done, he sprawls out on the covers. Ah, the sweet smell of success. Or in this case, the sweet smell of Joshua’s laundry, which promptly does its level best to crawl up his nose in the form of a pillow to the face. And that’s totally unfair because _Josh deserved that, dammit_ so obviously the only thing to do is throw it right back at him.

They go back and forth for a minute before someone (Josh) gets the idea to cheat with levitation and bury someone (Neku) with an armada of murderous pillows. Neku tries to sit on him in revenge but then the asshole starts wiggling his eyebrows in a way that is probably not safe for work and Neku is morally obligated to try to murder him before he starts in on the necrophilia jokes.

They’re both gross and sweaty and snickering like twelve year olds and yeah, okay, this is a decent place to sleep.

 

* * *

 

Sleep doesn’t come naturally to Joshua anymore.

Oh, he slept in the Long Game, of course. He’s human as anyone else when he’s in the RG, caught catnaps at WildKat and passed out with everyone else in between Game days during his week with Neku.

But Shibuya is so _alive_ at every hour with the rush of Music tugging _heretheretherethere_ like the river she is, and it doesn’t take much water to sweep someone away to drown in it. The Composer alone can keep his footing and let it rush through and past, but there’s a cost.

There’s always a cost. Sleep, he thought in the beginning, was a relatively small one.

(He read the research in silence when it first came out. The way sleep repairs the living, lets them remember and process and adapt. Every Composer remembers their predecessors as rigid, unbalanced, unreasonable, not quite right in any way that matters- and maybe that isn’t just the edge of power that makes it so.)

Angels never sleep either. Which, he thinks, explains very much about the massive stick up their collective ass. How unfortunate for them.

There are ways to give himself a reprieve, of course. He can retreat to the RG and let H guard him while he rests, let himself be vulnerable for the hours it takes for him to wake up. Of course, that would also leave him open to assassination, whether from Mr. H or some other up-and-coming hopeful. Sanae is a wonderful Producer, but a very poor bodyguard, and he has a track record.

(Neku’s apartment isn’t even an option; it’s not warded. As much as Neku might hover and cling if Joshua hid there to sleep, he can’t actually do much against a Reaper with lethal intent.)

So actual sleeping is not so much an option.

Of course, another way to rest is to let himself die. Not permanently, not Erasure, but slipping over to the RG and back with the same _intent_ of his first death, the death where he put a bullet in his head. Joshua knows his history; human sacrifice was a popular way to create Reapers and Composers, back in the day. Far, far, far back in the day. But it happened for a reason.

He’s tried that, a few times. Dizzy, disorienting; he wakes up some hours later sprawled out on the ground, whole and untouched by the blood soaking into the asphalt, glowing and ringing like a struck bell. It takes weeks for him to lower his vibe enough to touch the RG again. He doesn’t tell Neku why.

H gives him a long, steady look when he comes back the first time. Sanae looks sad but there’s a thousand other eyes behind his own and they stare through with uncompromising judgement. Joshua stares back with all the arrogance that is his due and all the power of Shibuya’s Composer, but inside he is small and small and still afraid.

Joshua is too close to Ascension.

Each time he dies, he gets a little closer.

(He has to force himself back down into Shibuya’s music when he passes, but she pulls him in with open arms. They cling to each other like binary stars; he is Shibuya’s, and she is his. He doesn't want to go. _He doesn't want to go yet._ )

There is one more way, a sort of happy medium between dying and being real. A way to pull himself into the RG and chain a city’s worth of Music in a human body. It’s rather inconvenient for anyone trying to assassinate the Composer; anyone who disturbs him is filled with the same degree of Music, of course, and gets immediately erased. No Reaper's wings can handle the sheer volume of even a tiny piece of Shibuya. 

Neku is a brave and curious partner to have disturbed him so fearlessly, Joshua thinks to himself, and smiles. Just like him, then.

 

* * *

 

Neku wakes up with a hell of a hangover.

He’s got energy for days, he can’t have slept any less than 12 hours- but ow. Ow. Headache.

A hand smooths over his forehead before he can do much more than squint his eyes, and the pain recedes.

“Better?”

Neku considers, takes a moment to let himself settle.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

A hum, and Joshua taps him lightly on the nose before pulling back. He hasn’t cleaned himself up yet; they’re both a fucking mess.  

Since Neku can actually sit up without his head going boom, bullet style, he does. He props himself up on an elbow, just enough to get a good view of his partner’s face.

“So.” _Not to spoil the warm and fuzzies…_ he thinks very clearly, and gets a giggle in response. “Mind telling me what that was about?”

“Hmmm…” Sheets rustle as Josh flops back onto the pillows, clearly pleased. “Maybe.”

“Maybe?!”

A lazy wave. “You should calm down a little, dear. Wouldn’t want to die of an aneurysm at this early age.”

“You’re not funny, asshole.”

“I am very funny. You just lack sophistication.”

“Josh."

"By the way, was that a Necrophiliacs Anonymous pamphlet I saw in your bag? You know they do say the first step is acknowledging the problem-"

" _Josh!"_ Neku is just on the verge of being genuinely pissed. 

A put-upon sigh, a crease between carefully shaped eyebrows. “If you aren't going to be entertaining, I would like to go back to sleep.”

“Don’t you dare!”

“I would _like_ to.”

“Josh, I swear to God-”

The Composer scowls back at him, for once as frustrated as he is, and Neku freezes. He’s almost-not-quite glowing at the edges for the space of a heartbeat, whites of his eyes too white to be called _white,_  something winged and fierce and fragile under his skinand- this is the deity of Shibuya that brings the dead to their knees, this is the god Megumi died for. Something is frozen in him like fight or flight and he can’t breathe and he can almost feel the bullet in his-

Joshua blinks, and Neku collapses back onto the blankets and cushions. His vision’s grey around the edges and _holy shit,_ that was fucking terrifying, and thank fuck he _blinked._

What the fuck just happened? 

There’s a deep sigh, and fingers carefully pushing back the fringe of his hair. On anyone else Neku would call this hesitation.

“You aren’t listening, Neku,” Joshua says, quiet and quiet and very close to Neku’s ear, “pay attention.”

And when Neku was young and still wanted to learn about other people's worlds an aunt very gently told him: there are some things we don’t talk about. And her face was careful and still in the same way Joshua’s breath is not there in the curve of his ear and the way he reaches out one hand to close the lids of Neku’s eyes- a smooth movement, the way you’re supposed to do when the dead have died with their eyes still open.

And somewhere in all of this there is the carved-stone solidity of thought that comes from imprinting, the roll of used bullets through small fingers, the little scar under the curve of his back where a knife took him by surprise in his first decade. Somewhere in this is longing and a bed hardly used with sheets hardly rumpled and a closet full of clothes never needed to be worn. A memory, worn smooth from handling and wrapped carefully in silk. A morning of sun on sheets on skin and hopeful, hopeful, waking-

The equivalence of life for death, of holding memories in his liminal hands and saying, this is the price to become more. This is for the chance that you could be more than this-

Neku feels it coming before it happens and tries to move, to say something that starts with _wait_ and ends with _don’t go_. But Joshua’s imprint is solid and soft like silk over stone, and-

 _Sleep_ , the Composer says.

 

* * *

 

After Neku wakes up, they don’t talk about Composer business or the Game for a long time. Not until the week before Neku is supposed to actually leave for college instead of just studying long-distance, when he’s curled up in Joshua’s bedroom enjoying free Wi-Fi and more coffee than he should.

 _It’s not like I can fall asleep anyway,_ he says, and with anyone else the usual complaint would turn into jokes about college insomnia and what stress does to your sleeping patterns. But Joshua’s eyes widen, just a bit, and he smiles.

(A real smile, not the thin mimicry he teases people with whenever he can.)

 _I can help you with that,_ he says. _Do you trust me?_

By the time Neku’s finished chewing him out for even needing to ask that, it’s late enough that he agrees. He needs sleep like the desert needs water, and he’s so tired.

In the seconds between turning out the light and passing out, he asks if Joshua will sleep too, like it’s not a silly question to ask when you’re sleeping in a friend’s bed. The room is dark, and he can’t see, but he can hear his partner laugh at him.

 _Composers can’t sleep, Neku dear,_ and the sound of Joshua’s voice follows him into his dreams. _It’s part of our price for existing._ The words Neku wants to say don’t quite make it to his lips- what was his price, shouldn’t he-?

Neku’s fifth clue comes when he wakes up alone.

**Author's Note:**

> This started with "headcanons about Joshua and music" and ran the hell away from me, I have no idea what happened.


End file.
